Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) changed the world in many ways, including launching the De Beers Mining Company in 1888.

Frederic Tudor (1783–1864) was a US businessman, known as the ‘Ice King’, as the founder of the Tudor Ice Company.

Ice harvesting at Arlington, Massachusetts, in 1852, showing the railroad line in the background used to transport the ice.

The rise of commercial ice was supported by many marketing claims that ‘natural’ products were always superior to those created by machines. Many of these claims mirror those made about diamonds today.

Rhodes entered the diamond trade in 1871 and began systematically buying out and consolidating diamond mines. Over the next two decades, he gained a near-complete monopoly of the diamond market.